Monday, August 31, 2015

A Story of the Stratotanker

Today marks the first flight of the famed Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker on 31 August 1956.  By the following spring, the USAF had a grand total of two KC-135A aerial tankers in its inventory, one based at Edwards AFB and one at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.  By then, the Navy was preparing an attempt on the Los Angeles-to-New York transcontinental speed record with the impressive new Vought F8U Crusader.  The Air Force planned its attempt for the latter part of 1957 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Aeronautical Division of the Army Signal Corps in August 1907.  The record attempt would be flown by factory fresh RF-101C aircraft assigned to the 432nd Tactical Reconnaissance Group, which had higher fuel capacity and extended afterburner time compared to the existing RF-101A Voodoo.  Success would depend on the jet speeds and high-altitude refueling capability of the new Stratotanker versus existing piston-engine KB-50 and KC-97 aircraft.

RF-101C 56-0166, the first aircraft to launch for the transcontinental record attempt, at Ontario Airport in southern California just before its early morning departure to NAS Floyd Bennett in New York.  The Schrecengost Archives of the late Col. Ray W. Schrecengost, Jr., USAF.


In May 1957, USAF test pilot Maj. Austin A. "Gus" Julian was tasked to fly a Voodoo from Edwards AFB to the McDonnell factory at Lambert Field in St. Louis, Missouri, taking fuel from both of the Air Force's test KC-135A tankers to test and develop procedures for the ultimate record attempt.  On the morning of 27 May 1957, Gus Julian departed from Edwards AFB and headed east toward the first tanker rendezvous point.  In 2012, he related to me the hair-raising story of his flight:

The fuel system had a lot to be desired in the original F-101.  As I said, you have five tanks, strung out along the fuselage and all feeding out to number 1 to the engines.  I remember an incident I had where TAC was setting up an operation they called SUN-RUN, it was a [speed run from] California to [New York].  I was told to see what I could do with the airplane.  So, I set it up to go from Edwards to McDonnell, and was going to use the [new KC-135] for in-flight refueling.  Now up to that time, we had never used [“flying-boom”] refueling, even during Phase VI because, mainly, we didn’t have any tankers.  [Production KC-135 tankers would not be delivered until late summer of 1957.]  The Air Force had kept the first two tankers, one of them at Wright Field, one at Edwards. 

Refueling boom operating limits for KC-135 / RF-101. USAF.


So, using the tanker from Edwards, I took the F-101 and stabbed the tanker about a dozen or so times.  The receptacle was aft of me, over my head.  So, on that day we took off, and my plan was to refuel first over Santa Fe, use the Wright Field tanker over Wichita then on into St. Louis.  But when I took off, the weather was bad over Santa Fe.  Now, normally, you’d drop down to 15 or 20,000 feet to refuel, you would get a better flow rate down there.  But, the weather was over Santa Fe.  Joe Gandy was flying the tanker, so I said to him, “Well, let’s try it.”  I got on to the tanker at 39,000 feet (chuckle) and got a load of fuel.  Now, in that particular airplane, one of the first production airplanes, they had an extra 100-gallon tank in it.  I got 12,000 pounds of fuel and was using one burner, just cracking in to stay on there, but I eventually fell off.  Well, I had enough fuel to continue.  

So the next leg was in burner, going downhill, where I pulled in on the Wright Field tanker, oh, around Wichita.  I had a ready light to get fuel but…I couldn’t take any fuel, and there was a broken overcast below us.  I had now run out of fuel and now I am down to that 100 gallons on those two big J57 engines, or so I thought, so we turned back into Wichita.  But I switched over to the 100 gallon to come to find out that in actuality something had happened up there to siphon it all out.  So that’s what made it so binding to get back into Wichita in through that overcast.  I let down through the overcast and on a high base leg, at Wichita, and shut one engine down as I let down, but I fired up just as I was rounding out for touchdown and flamed out on the rollout.  Come to find out later that when I’d fell off that tanker, I’d practically ripped the receptacle right out of the airplane.  So, we didn’t go on to St. Louis. 

Detail of boom refueling receptacle. USAF.


I spent the night there in Wichita and then I was going to go back to talk to Col. Hanes and bring the airplane back to Edwards.  I knew that I had been running in burner quite a bit, and I needed oil.  Well, it was a new airplane and the only other place that knew how to service the airplane was another Systems Command base which was down in Albuquerque [Kirtland AFB].  So, the next morning, thinking about those Schutz valves, before take-off I’d get up on the wing with a chock and beat along where the valves were (chuckle) under the skin to make sure they were working.  I went down to Albuquerque and landed there.  That’s where I knew I could get fuel and that they knew how to put oil in the thing there.  So, this was Memorial Day, and, of course, the Indy 500 was going on. 

Well, I got up that morning, there was not a cloud in the sky, got up on the wing and beat on the Schutz valves, and took off.  Well, right about over where the big crater is in Arizona [Winslow], I glanced down at my left and saw two great big red lights…a double hydraulic failure.  Well, this is not supposed to happen!  But I remembered that, according to the McDonnell engineers, they had told me that this couldn’t happen but in the event it did, that the last 1500 to 1600 pounds of hydraulic pressure that was trapped in the system could get the gear down.  At about the same time I discovered, also, that my Schutz valves had stopped up and nothing was feeding in to the main fuel tank.  So here I was sucking fuel out of that No.1 tank, which was only being refueled by gravity feed, just barely enough to get on and I was really watching that, so I had to have C.G. on the airplane, I had to contend with that on the letdown, too.  Well, I wiggled the stick and got a little bit of response from it so, I figured, I might as well keep heading west.  I was going to go on to home as far as I could to Edwards and then punch out.  Anyway, I eased that airplane around very gingerly, and I contacted the tower from somewhere over Barstow, eased around to up to the north of the base, got it headed south at 20,000 feet, and then I dropped the gear.  Sure enough, that thing froze up just solid as a rock.  About five…seven seconds, seemed like seven hours….but the gear came down.  Anyway, I got the airplane on the ground and Iven Kincheloe and Danny [Lt. Col. Boyd L.] Grubaugh met me there at Edwards. 


It was a holiday and I went home, and now lived next door to Kincheloe.  Kinch was going to get married pretty soon, so, I told him about the flight for the two days, and how many times I’d had my hands on that “Next of Kin” handle and thinking about bailing out. As I got through, my wife came out and said, “Now let me tell you what happened while you were gone.  One of the kids mashed his finger in the refrigerator!”  But Kinch thought he was going to get married in the next couple of weeks.  Anyway, she went back in the house and Grubaugh, shaking his head, he said to Kinch, “And you still want to get married?”

Regrettably, Gus Julian was never to see the final edition of the book, although he did receive a "paste-up" copy that I had prepared in the spring of 2013.  He passed away on November 13, 2013.  God bless you, sir, and thank you for everything.




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